


June Story

by Tres13



Category: Homestuck
Genre: Cloaca, Egg-laying, M/M, Mpreg, Slash
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-12-23
Updated: 2012-12-23
Packaged: 2017-11-22 03:09:26
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Underage
Chapters: 6
Words: 19,751
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/605172
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Tres13/pseuds/Tres13
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>((Influenced by certain concepts found on Tumblr, such as this one: http://askdavespritescloaca.tumblr.com/post/24219930349/anatomy-of-a-davesprite-as-far-as-the-skeletal and this one: http://kelaruj.tumblr.com/post/24707300227))</p>
    </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> ((Influenced by certain concepts found on Tumblr, such as this one: http://askdavespritescloaca.tumblr.com/post/24219930349/anatomy-of-a-davesprite-as-far-as-the-skeletal and this one: http://kelaruj.tumblr.com/post/24707300227))

The temperatures aboard the ship are fairly consistent, but the Ghost Busters calendar you alchemized a while back tells you it’s summertime. You’ve been flying through space or wherever it is for nearly a year now, and you and Jade have both celebrated a birthday since the journey began. Davesprite tried to insist that he didn’t need to celebrate birthdays anymore, since he’s not really a human being now, but you and your friendly neighborhood Witch of Space took it upon yourselves to make sure he got a party anyway. He tried to play it off like he didn’t care, but you could tell it meant a lot to him.

You figure he’s got—what would Rose call it—a _complex_ ; some part of him wonders if he’s really “Dave” anymore, after everything he’s been through, and while that seems pretty silly to you (you’d know Dave whether he had feathers or not, and this is definitely him), there’s no way you can totally convince him that he’s just as real and important as the non-birdy version. It gets a little frustrating at times, but you keep at it because that’s what good bros do.

But back to the topic of summer. You were pretty excited when you realized what time of year it was, because summer means all kinds of awesome things, like pool parties and water balloon fights and ice cream, and just because you’re sailing through some weird in-between dimension on your way to possible doom, that doesn’t mean you can’t still enjoy yourself. Anyway, you’re sure the animal consorts will enjoy the fuck out of a pool party at any rate, so that’s the first thing on your list to accomplish.

It takes a while to alchemize all the necessities, but when you’re done, you can’t help but feel a swelling of pride at your work. The pool is smaller than you’d like, but still plenty big enough for about a dozen people to splash around in, and there are a couple of tubs full of water balloons, and even a couple of squirt guns, though those things are oddly expensive to make, so you couldn’t produce too many. You also made a bunch of foam pool noodles, since those are always a hit.

You’re all set to go get your friends and show them your creations when Davesprite makes an appearance. He stops and stares at all the stuff you’ve alchemized, and you grin and spread your arms out in a “ta-da!” sort of pose. “Surprise! I made stuff for a pool party. What do you think?”

He floats over to the small pile of foam noodles, and pokes one before scooping it up. “I’m gonna borrow this,” he says, and without waiting for an answer, flies away with it.

“Heeeey! I need that for—aw whatever. I guess if he wants the stupid noodle, he can have it.” You’ve got plenty more, so just one should be okay. Still, what does he even want with it? Bird-human-sprite guys sure are weird.

About an hour later, he comes back and makes off with six more noodles, in spite of your protests. An hour after that, when he tries to steal the fluffy beach towels you’ve only just finished making, you lose your temper. “Put those back! How are people supposed to dry off after the water balloon fight if there aren’t any towels, Dave!?”

He just gives you that flat, unreadable look that he does when you’re annoying him. “I need them for something. You can make more, right?”

“Alchemizing things takes grist!”

“And you’ve got enough to last you for the next ten years, let alone the two we have left on this boat. Anyway, if you’re worried, you can make a lot of really little towels and then just have Jade make them bigger. Less expense that way.”

You sigh, because arguing with him is like beating your head against a steel door. A steel door made of Tang-colored feathers and insufferable prick. Rather than actual steel. Gah, he’s much better at metaphors than you; maybe you shouldn’t try. “At least tell me what you need them for.”

His neck feathers ruffle up a little at that, and he suddenly won’t quite look at you anymore. “Just…stuff. Things.”

“Stuff and things,” you say, narrowing your eyes at him skeptically.

“Yeah.”

“Okay, whatever.” You shrug at him, pretending you don’t care even as curiosity threatens to eat you alive. “Take your towels for your stuff and things. Just promise me you’ll come to the pool party later.”

He promises no such thing, only adjusts the enormous load of fluffy towels in his arms to get a better grip before flying off. You wait a few seconds before following him.

Your shoes would make too much noise, so you use your windy powers to float along after Davesprite. This kind of control is difficult; you have to summon enough wind to stay aloft, but not so much that he’ll hear you or feel the breeze behind him. You guess it’s good practice, even if it could be considered a gross misuse of your abilities.

Davesprite takes his armful of towels deep into the inner recesses of the ship, farther than you’ve ever bothered to explore. As the air grows warmer, you realize this must be somewhere near the engine room. What does he want down here of all places?

Finally he stops, and uses his tail to open a door on the left side of the corridor. He slips inside, and you touch down as quietly as possible, tiptoeing over to peek in after him. It takes you a moment, but then you figure out what you’re looking at, and have to force yourself not to laugh.

In the center of the room (it _is_ the engine room, you note) is a huge, circular arrangement of miscellaneous items, from the towels which Davesprite is meticulously positioning in the center, to things like socks, pillowcases (you were wondering where those went!), streamers from the last couple of birthday parties, a few hair ribbons that you think belong to Jade, dozens of orange feathers, various pieces of colorful Prospitian clothing, and a hundred other items. The pool noodles are being used as structural supports, helping to maintain the circular shape, along with alternating lengths of rope that look like they come from curtains or the like.

You can’t help the huge grin that comes to your face. Davesprite built a nest. That’s so cute! No wonder he wouldn’t tell you what he was doing; you can only imagine how embarrassing it must be for a coolkid like him to be bossed around by his animal instincts like this. And boy, is he into it. He hasn’t noticed you at all, and you’re not even hiding anymore, just watching from the doorway as obvious as you please.

He finally seems to get the towels exactly how he wants them, and then he promptly curls up in the center of the nest with a contented sigh. Only then does he spot you, and when his feathers poof out in shock, you finally break down and guffaw.

He lays there, stiff and scowling at you, until you’re finished. “Done?” he asks as you wipe the tears of mirth from your eyes. You nod. “Good,” he snaps. “Get out.”

“Aw, don’t be like that! I think it’s adorable.”

“Oh, yeah, it’s a real hoot,” he growls at you, wings hunching up around him defensively. “Let’s all giggle at Davesprite ‘cause he can’t resist the compulsion to scavenge for fluffy shit and build himself a fucking nest. It’s just hilarious that I have a feathery asshole in my brain, making me do shit like this even when the human part of me knows it’s stupid. It’s so funny I could die, but oh, wait, I’m a mutant ghost thing, so does that mean it’s so funny I already died? I dunno, John, _you tell me_.”

“Whoa, hold on,” you protest, holding up both hands in what you hope is a placating gesture. “I’m sorry I laughed, okay? I just thought it was cute; I didn’t mean to hurt your feelings or your pride or whatever else is bruised now.”

He huddles down in the beach-towel-lined center of his creation, drawing his wings up higher so they form a kind of shield over him. “Fuck off. I didn’t want to do this. I couldn’t help it. Just go away.”

Guilt starts to twist around uncomfortably inside you. You didn’t mean to bring that miserable expression to his face. You cautiously approach the nest, and reach over the edge to lay a hand on Davesprite’s shoulder. He twitches, but doesn’t try to throw you off, so you take that as a good sign. “I’m sorry,” you reiterate. “I guess it must be hard sometimes. I wasn’t making fun of you, I promise.”

He’s silent for so long that you begin to think he won’t answer you at all. You’re about to retreat, give him back his privacy, when he finally speaks. “I don’t talk about it because what’s the damn point…but it is hard,” he mumbles. “I don’t expect you to get it, but I’ve got this whole other creature inside me, and sometimes I can’t remember which part is me and which part is the stupid crow. Add that to the part of me that’s just a game construct now, and you’ve got one confused sonofabitch.”

“Oh, Dave,” you say softly, because you aren’t sure what else to say to that. How do you tell him it will be okay when you really _don’t_ understand what it’s like?

You move your hand to his head and just pet his hair for a while, trying to comfort him. He has really soft hair, you note; it’s thick and downy, and here and there it feels more like feathers than like human hair. On a whim, you move your hand down to the nape of his neck and rub gently, like your dad used to do on the rare occasions when you’d get sick, and Davesprite makes a very quiet chirping sound. It’s nice, and when you press your thumb in a little harder he does it louder, and now you can hear a muted moan in there too. You think you read something once about birds having two sets of vocal cords, so it makes sense that he could make human noises and bird noises at the same time.

He’s very warm, you realize, and wonder if it’s because of the heat from the engines. You’re soon distracted from this line of thought by one of his wings brushing against your arm. You’ve always wanted to touch one, just to see what they were like, and since he’s already letting you pet him you figure he won’t mind.

The moment you stroke his wing he shivers all over, and you immediately jerk your hand back, thinking you hurt him somehow. But he peers up at you over the tops of his sunglasses, and there’s this sort of glazed look in his eyes, which are a mesmerizing shade of orange-gold. “Don’t stop,” he whispers, and you swallow hard, because all at once this is something worlds beyond just comforting your best friend.

Indecision hits you; should you abscond? Keep going? Leap out an airlock? It’s no secret to you that you find Davesprite insanely attractive. Oh, it came as a huge shock initially; you didn’t think you had a thing for guys, and especially not a guy who is an alternate-timeline version of your long-standing buddy Dave, but after a few weeks of swimming in the murky waters of deNile, you sort of got used to it. Nowadays, noticing that Davesprite is hot is just a thing that happens, and it doesn’t bother you anymore.

Or it didn’t, until this moment. Now, when he’s looking at you like that, when you’re touching him and he’s _letting_ you, you can no longer avoid everything that comes along with thinking that Davesprite is hot, from the way he’s currently making your pulse do double-time, to the way your pants are starting to be a little on the tight side. Jesus, you are springing a boner because of your best friend who is also a bird, and the worst part is, you can’t say for certain where this even came from. Yeah, he’s your very best pal, and you have all kinds of positive feelings for him, and yes, he’s undeniably sexy, but how on earth did you get from thinking the nest-building thing was cute to wanting to kiss him so bad it’s making your mouth water?

You unconsciously pet his wing again, pushing your fingers into the satiny feathers, and he keens, arching his back, his eyes fluttering closed. You’re doing this to him, it’s you, and god you want to do it some more.

Things like “worry” and “hesitation” do a suicidal leap out the window, and you pull him to you and smash your lips together almost too hard, but he just kisses you back with enough enthusiasm that it doesn’t matter how much you suck at this. His mouth is hot, and his teeth click painfully against yours at first, and you don’t even care because he tastes fucking amazing. The only thing that’s wrong is that the thick border of the nest is between you and him, and he solves that by latching onto your clothes and yanking you in with him. The two of you sprawl in the pile of beach towels in the middle and proceed to make out like the horny teenagers you are.

Once he’s managed to claw and yank your shirt off of you, you roll so he’s on top of you and dig both hands into the base of his wings, feeling the difference between smooth skin and feathers. He groans, and the sound goes straight to your dick. You decide you need out of your pants _yesterday_ , or at least before they cut off circulation to somewhere vital. Luckily, Davesprite seems to have the same idea, because when you go for your zipper his hands are already there, yanking the metal tab down nearly hard enough to snap it off, and then practically ripping a seam when he tugs your pants down and off. He’s so aggressive it scares you a little, but the look in his now-bare eyes (his shades got tossed somewhere during the make-outs) is all need and desire and all those things you’ve heard about but never witnessed in real life.

When he palms you through your underwear you gasp and buck into his hand. It occurs to you that this is actually happening; you’re honestly having some type of intimate relations with somebody, and a guy at that, and while you’re almost definitely sure you like it, you also can’t help being a little anxious about it. Some tiny part of your brain thinks this is happening _way too fast_ , but that part is thoroughly eclipsed by the feeling when Davesprite slips his hand beneath your briefs and wraps it around you.

He only pumps you a couple of times before he loses his patience and yanks your underwear off too, chucking it in a random direction like your shirt and pants before. His body sliding against yours is mind-blowing, and you try—with minimal success—to stifle your embarrassing noises over the sensation.

Davesprite ripples in your arms like a snake, wings trembling as he presses his groin area into yours, basically dry-humping you in his desperation. You aren’t sure what else is supposed to happen until, with a frustrated growl, he grabs your hand and shoves it against him around where he’d have junk if he was still a normal human being. You start in surprise when you feel how hot he is there—and holy shit, he’s _leaking_ , just a trickle of yellow-gold fluid, but now you can feel a fleshy slit of some kind under your hand, and when you press with your fingers a little they slip inside. More brightly-colored liquid oozes out around your fingers, and Davesprite whimpers when you push them further in, gasping out things like “fuck, _fuck_ , yeah, ohgod, John, please….” He’s so far gone already, and you’ve barely done anything. It’s all kinds of flattering, to be honest, and it makes you hot as hell to boot.

You stroke your free hand down his back, exploring the slight curve of his spine, feeling the subtle transition between his lower back and tail. He flaps his wings impatiently, so you reach up to pet them some more, forcing another of those beautiful keening sounds out of him. Then, you twist and spread the fingers that are buried inside him, pressing them in up to the knuckle, and he lets out a loud, hoarse noise that’s a mishmash of a caw and human cry. It’s terribly unsexy, and you have to muffle your laugh against the ruff of feathers around his neck. He hears you anyway and swears at you, but when you curl your fingers up and rub all the anger goes out of him as he convulses and moans.

You press your thumb into him too, and to your surprise, you feel what appears to be another, internal set of “lips,” already halfway parted around something smooth and rounded and wet at the tip. You massage gently, and lo and behold, out into the open air slips a dick. Huh; well, that answers your question about whether Davesprite is a girl or a boy down there. Actually, no, that doesn’t answer a damn thing, because he may be sporting an erection, but your hand is still half-buried in what seems an awful lot like a vagina, so maybe he’s both?

Then again, it’s hard to care about details right now. As fascinating as Davesprite’s anatomy would be if you were in the mood for science, at the moment you kind of just want to see if all that stuff leaking out of him tastes as good as his mouth did. You remove your fingers, causing Davesprite to protest until you pop one of them in your mouth, at which point he’s struck silent, watching you with his mouth open and his eyes comically wide. It’s hard to describe his flavor. The slippery fluid is sort of bitter, sort of sweet, and incredibly addicting; you close your eyes and suck the stuff off your fingers one at a time, and hear the sprite moan. He pushes your hand out of the way and kisses you, licking his way into your mouth and tasting himself on your tongue, and you let out a moan of your own when you feel him grind his cock insistently against yours.

Somewhere between the two of you bucking against each other, he gets a hand in between you and guides you inside him, and the sensation of him tight and grasping and wet around you is almost too much. You’ll deny forever that the helpless little gasp you just heard came from you, but you’ll have all the time in the world to be mortified later, when you’re not busy thrusting instinctively into that slick, gorgeous warmth. Davesprite wraps his long tail around one of your legs and clutches at your shoulders with hard, claw-like nails, and it hurts but it also feels really, really good, as do the teeth he scrapes against your neck in a fit of want. You’re going to have marks on you later, and so is he; your nails are much more blunt, but they still leave crescent-shaped dents and faint lines all over his back where your hands struggle to keep a grip on his damp skin.

A particularly rough thrust makes him _sob_ , and you stammer apologies, but he half-laughs at you through his moans. “Doesn’t h-hurt,” he attempts to assure you. “Feels good, oh fuck, John, I’m gonna cum—” This last emerges as something close to a whine, and you blush at the way he squirms and ruts frantically against you, but you’re moving too, hard and desperate, and when you once again bury your hands in the feathers at the base of his wings, he lets out an inhuman shriek that scares you half to death. Bright-yellow fluid splashes messily between your bodies, and it would feel disgusting if the way he squeezes you didn’t set off your own orgasm like the freaking Fourth of July. You can’t even remember what kind of vocalizations you make, because your brain goes pleasantly empty and dark for a while, until gradually, the sound of your own panting brings you back. There’s a warm, thrumming sensation throughout your body, and okay, _now_ you’re starting to feel gross, but you don’t want to move yet, lest the spell be broken.

Eventually it breaks anyway, with somewhat unexpected results. You feel Davesprite go slowly rigid in your arms. “Shit,” he croaks, his voice harsh from all the, erm, noise he was making before.

“Dave?” you query, blinking groggily at him. Okay, so that was kind of out of the blue what happened just now, but why does he suddenly look so panicked? “Dave, relax, it’s okay—”

“No, jesus christ, it is _not_ okay,” he growls weakly, trying to wiggle out of your embrace and failing, because you won’t let him. “Let go of me, fuck, I’m so _stupid_.”

Something inside you cracks a little. “Why, because we had sex? That’s not stupid, it’s awesome.” And okay, maybe you sounded a little pathetic there, but come on, it was your first time! You’re allowed to be sentimental.

He stares at you, a touch wild-eyed. “How can you say that? I just—fucking _threw myself at you_ like a complete cockwhore, how is that awesome!?” He clamps a hand over his eyes, his face flushing a vibrant yellow-orange hue. “God, I want to crawl into a hole and die. Let me go so I can do that. Fucking bird hormones, _shit_.”

The hurt you’ve only just started to feel fades as you realize that he’s not regretting it because of you; he’s embarrassed at _himself_ for acting so crazy. “Hey, look, it’s not that bad. I made noises too.”

He groans and pushes away from you, and this time you let him go. The look on his face when he sees the mess the two of you made is priceless. “Holy shit. It looks like someone blew up a Florida Orange Juice factory.”

“Wow, yeah. Geez, you came a _lot_.”

“Ugh, no, shut up. Shut. Up.”

There’s a period of awkward silence while you both clean yourselves up with a couple of the beach towels. After a while, though, the doubt creeps back in, and you have to say something before you go nuts. “Dave? Did you…actually not want any of that?”

He stares at the yellow-stained towel in his hands, the tip of his tail flicking restlessly. “I didn’t exactly… _not_ want it. Thing is, I think I’m having a lot of weird crow shit going on right now. The urge to make a nest, the urge to, you know…mate, or something.” He frowns when he sees your crestfallen expression, and hurries to explain himself further. “But look, if I didn’t actually want _you_ it wouldn’t have happened at all.” His face is all buttercup-colored again, and you’ve never seen him so nervous, so _shy_. “I like you, okay? There, I said it: I like you. You’re a dweeb and my best bro and I’m completely twitterpated over you. I want to kiss your face, and cuddle under the blankets with you, and—”

You lean over and press your lips to his, and he quits babbling to gape at you. When you pull back, he just stays like that, stunned and silent. “I think I like you too, Dave. I mean, you’re my friend, and I care about you a lot. I’ve also thought you were pretty hot for a while now.”

Slowly, a smile forms on the sprite’s lips. “So I wasn’t imagining things. You really have stared at my ass.”

“Yes, I have ogled your prime posterior. But I swear my intentions were pure.”

“Pure. Right. How’s that working out for you, Egbert?”

You grin and kiss him again. “Hey, Dave.”

“What, John.”

“Since we just had sex in your super-cool nest, does that mean we’re married?”

“Wow, get me a ring first, dork.”

You tug him down into the remaining clean towels with you, and snuggle into his neck feathers with a tired smile. “Ring later. Sleep now.”

He squirms a bit, getting comfortable, and finally settles down. “Fine. But we’re going ring-shopping in the morning. I expect a huge rock after the ride I just gave you.”

“Shut up, Dave.”

“…Okay.”

~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~


	2. Chapter 2

In spite of his claims that the two of you are going hunting for marriage bands, Davesprite won’t leave the nest for days after the two of you “christen” it. When you question him about it, he just shrugs and mutters some stuff about just feeling like he should stay put. It concerns you, and makes you wonder if it’s your fault somehow. Were you too rough? Did you hurt him? Is he still just too ashamed of himself? Or is it simply more “crow hormone shit” giving him grief?

He’s there for so long that you actually begin to worry about his health. Truthfully, you aren’t sure if he needs to eat or sleep now that he’s a sprite (you’ve seen him do both, but you aren’t sure he _needs_ to). Nevertheless, you bring him things and remind him to rest. He seems grateful, whether your actions are actually necessary or not. As a matter of fact, he gets oddly lovey-dovey with you when you do stuff for him, like bringing him food. He likes you to feed him, you discover; he’ll take nibbles of this or that straight from your hand, and kiss your fingers in between bites. He also enjoys it when you pet his hair, and his wings too; he’ll shiver and squirm when you do the latter, so of course you do it whenever you can get away with it. Sometimes he’ll blush, like he knows how demonstrative he’s being, but can’t help himself. Through it all, you hold your tongue and try not to grin, because you definitely like this affectionate side of him, and you don’t want to ruin it by making him all embarrassed.

It’s two weeks since the two of you had mind-blowing sex, and you’re currently snuggled up with Davesprite in his nest, with your arm slung over his waist and his tail wound loosely around your leg. It’s late, and you’re half-asleep, nearly all asleep, when all at once his tail tightens almost painfully around you, and his nails dig hard into your chest. You jerk fully awake, shock rushing into your veins hard enough to make you dizzy, and find yourself staring into a pair of equally startled orange-gold eyes. “Dave? What’s the matter?”

“I….” He blinks, a bewildered expression settling on his face. “I dunno, I just—hgk!” He doubles up so hard that it has you scrambling to sit up and help him, though _how_ you’re supposed to help, you have no idea. Davesprite’s eyes are wide and just barely starting to gleam with panic; his body slowly relaxes—only to scrunch up again as another wave of pain hits him. “FUCK!”

“What’s wrong, where does it hurt!?” you demand. You’re flipping out and completely failing to hide it, and you know it’s only going to make things worse, but you can’t help it. Davesprite is twisting around in agony, and _you don’t know what to do_.

The sprite is panting now, and in an effort to find the cause of his suffering, you start running your hands over his body as carefully as possible. It’s only when you reach his stomach that you discover the possible culprit. The flesh here should yield under your touch, but instead it’s hard as rock. You press gently, and Davesprite gasps, one of his hands latching onto your wrist. Fuck, okay, that’s _definitely_ where it hurts. You don’t want to cause him further pain, but you still don’t know what’s wrong, so you continue exploring with light pressure, murmuring apologies as the other boy whimpers in protest.

There’s some kind of obstruction there, something hard and somewhat rounded, kind of like—

“Oh my god,” you exclaim, meeting Davesprite’s eyes with nothing short of astonishment. “Is that….”

He groans, the sound half pain and half despair. “I didn’t want to believe it. I could feel them growing, but I told myself I was getting fat or something so I wouldn’t freak.”

He is bigger, actually, and you kick yourself mentally for not making the connection. You also thought he was just getting a little chubby, from lazing around in his nest letting you feed him things for two weeks. Not that he was actually eating all that much—which, come to think of it, should have been your first clue that his expanding girth wasn’t due to caloric intake.

The sprite spasms, gritting his teeth around a cry, but unable to completely silence it. “The little bastards want out,” he says hoarsely. He’s so pale; he’d be white as a sheet if he had a normal person’s skin color. There’s fear in his eyes when he looks at you. “John, I don’t know how to—”

“Shh, shhh, it’s okay,” you rush to assure him. “I’ve got you, man, it’s gonna be fine.”

Jade, you think, Jade’s a girl; she’d know what to do when something’s being born, wouldn’t she? No, wait, that’s sexist. But, god, she has to! There’s no way you can do this on your own. “Dave, hold on, okay? I need to get help, but I’ll be right back—”

“No!” He grabs onto your shirt, sheer terror taking over his face. “Don’t go, don’t you fucking leave me!”

“Dave, I _promise_ , I’ll be back in two seconds, but I have to get Jade!”

“NO!”

You resist the urge to scream in frustration, and instead gather up your best friend who is also a bird, and lift him out of the nest. He’s really heavy for something part ghost, and any other time you’d be making wisecracks (“damn, Dave, put the fork _down_.”), but right now you need to haul ass to where Jade is. Being the Heir of Breath is all kinds of handy in situations like this; you put on the turbo, so to speak, and minutes later Jade is letting out a startled yelp as you burst into her room with your feathery buddy bundled in your arms.

“John, you can’t just—”

“Shut up and help me!” you blurt, losing your patience altogether. Jesus, can’t she see you’ve got a guy in labor here!?

To her credit, she takes notice of that particular detail almost exactly as you’re yelling at her. “Davesprite! John, what’s wrong with him?”

“He’s got eggs,” you explain, and her eyes go wide. “He has to lay them, but he doesn’t know how and we need your help!”

“Put him on the bed,” she instructs, going into what you’ve dubbed “Army General Mode.” You obey, laying the sprite on his side. Jade rolls up the sleeves of her God Tier hoodie, and yanks some latex gloves out of her sylladex. She tosses a pair at you too, and you put them on, not bothering (for now) to wonder why she has those.

“Oh my god,” Davesprite mumbles, “it’s like a bad episode of Grey’s Anatomy. Or just an episode of Grey’s Anatomy. Someone get me like a billion ccs of morphine, stat—” He cuts himself off with a loud gasp, and his tail thrashes atop the star-patterned comforter. “Shit, _shit_ , nnngh….”

Jade feels around blindly for a moment until, with reddening cheeks, you direct her hand to what Davesprite told you was his “cloaca.” _It’s not a bird vagina,_ he’d insisted. _Dude birds have them too._ Except that dude birds don’t lay eggs, so his argument is officially invalid.

Jade shoots you a look as you help her locate the opening, like she knows exactly why you know where that is and what it’s for, but lucky for you, she doesn’t call you on anything. She’ll probably save that for later, when the situation isn’t so dire. “Okay, Davesprite,” she instructs, “just relax. You don’t have to do anything else right now, so just breathe, okay?”

You glance anxiously between her and the sprite. “Doesn’t he have to push or whatever?”

Jade rolls her eyes. “He’s not dilated at all yet. If he pushes now, he’ll tear something.”

Davesprite looks absolutely horrified at that, and you’re pretty sure you look the same. “Oh….”

Another spasm sets the winged boy to writhing again; it hurts to watch, so you can only imagine how it must feel. You try to comfort him a little, rubbing his belly gently and murmuring words of encouragement. Jade keeps an eye on his progress downstairs, every now and then checking her laptop for the time. After a long, long while of waiting, her eyebrows draw together in concern.

“Still nothing,” she mutters. “I’m almost positive it should have started by now.”

She prods the nearly-invisible slit gently, and Davesprite flinches. “Whoa, Harley,” he manages, his voice strained, “at least buy me dinner before you start poking around under my skirt.”

Jade’s eyes narrow. “Davesprite,” she says sternly, “are you deliberately holding that shut?” His eyes dart away, and the girl throws her hands up in exasperation. “You are! Stop it right now, do you hear me!?”

A hint of color leaches back into his face. “Well, shit, you’re both staring at me! How am I supposed to get going like this?”

“You quit clenching _right now_ , mister,” Jade growls, her white dog ears laying back irritably. “Those eggs are gonna get stuck if you don’t let this happen like it’s supposed to, and then we’ll have an even bigger problem on our hands!”

“It’s fucking embarrassing! How’d you like to have a kid while people are eyeballing your junk!?”

“That’s kind of what happens every time someone has a baby,” Jade retorts. “At least, if they have any kind of help. Look, just think of me as the doctor, and John as the expectant dad, okay?”

“Kill me now—SHIT, getyourfingersoutofthere!”

The green-eyed girl gives an annoyed huff, and without warning, seizes your hand and places it where her own was a moment ago. “John, help him, since he doesn’t want me touching him like that.”

Your face is on fire, but it’s for Davesprite’s own good, and you really don’t think he wants those eggs getting stuck in him.

“John, don’t—”

You press lightly, and the sprite jerks and gasps as your fingers slip inside. “Easy,” you soothe. “Easy, Dave, just relax.”

“I hate you,” he moans, clutching at the bedspread as you gradually work him open. “I hate you, I hate Jade, I hate this stupid battleship, I hate this stupid, fucking UNIVERSE—ohfuck, stop, stop, I—”

He convulses, and the sound he makes is only half agony this time. You jump in surprise as hot, bright-yellow fluid gushes over your gloved hand. Did—did you just make him cum? From the way he’s shaking and covering his face with both hands in humiliation, it would seem you did. “Uh…oops?”

“Oh, god,” Davesprite whimpers. “Why is this happening? Just kill me.”

Jade is blushing something fierce now too, but she tries to maintain her composure all the same. “Um, that’s perfectly okay, you know? I mean, it happens. I think. Anyway, I can actually see what’s going on now that you’re not all clamped shut. You look like you’re starting to dilate nicely, so it shouldn’t be too long before we can get this show on the road for real.”

He glares at her as evilly as he can when he’s trembling and cloudy-eyed with pain. You discreetly wipe your messy hand on the bed (sorry, Jade), and go back to rubbing calming circles on Davesprite’s tummy. “It could be worse,” you tell him. “Rose could be here too. And she’d probably be taking notes.”

A malevolent, orange-gold eye fixes on you. “I’m going to choke you with your own windsock hood.” Then another contraction hits him, and he goes from threatening your life to clinging to you desperately. “Shit, it hurts,” he chokes out. “I don’t think I can do this.”

“You can. You can do it, Dave, it’ll be okay, I promise.”

He spasms again; so soon, the pains are coming faster now. “Don’t leave,” he pleads, and you don’t even care that Jade is watching anymore; you lean down and kiss his forehead.

“I won’t.”

It’s another fifteen minutes before Jade decides it’s all right to proceed. “Listen, it’s time to start now. Take a deep breath, and when you let it out, I want you to push, okay?”

Davesprite nods weakly, and you’ve seen enough childbirth in movies that the way he’s gripping your hand worries you a bit. You’d rather not get broken fingers out of this ordeal. Not that you’re going to make him let go; if he needs this, you’re giving it to him, broken digits or not.

“Deep breath,” Jade encourages. “Good. Now exhale and push.”

He obeys—and cries out in anguish. He quits pushing immediately and tries to curl up in a ball; Jade just barely manages to stop him by wrapping her arms around his tail. “Davesprite, don’t, you have to keep going!”

“No, no, fuck, I can’t—” He’s practically sobbing, and you can feel your eyes stinging in response. You’ve never seen him in this much pain. You’ve never seen _anyone_ in this much pain.

“You have to,” Jade insists, and there’s a glimmer of wetness in her eyes too, alongside determination. “Listen to me, I know it hurts, but there’s no other way.”

“Jade,” you butt in hopefully, “can’t you just make the eggs smaller? They’d hurt a lot less coming out that way, wouldn’t they?”

She rejects your idea with a stiff shake of her head. “If I do that, the shells won’t be strong enough to stand up to the contractions. He’ll crush them.”

You pale at that image. “Well, could you maybe, I dunno, teleport the eggs out, or something?”

“ _No_ , John, I can’t teleport the eggs because I can’t see what’s in there! What if I accidentally take out his organs!? Now you, be quiet, and Davesprite, I’m so sorry, but you have to try again. Are you ready?”

He sniffs, takes in a few gaspy little breaths, and finally manages a faint, “Y-yeah.”

“Good. Deep breath. And _push_.”

On her command, Davesprite strains hard, tears rolling down his face and practically every muscle standing out in stark relief. He has to stop after only a little while to catch his breath, and it’s so erratic that it’s almost like he’s forgotten _how_ to breathe. You try to help him, taking deep, even breaths so he can follow your rhythm, and it seems to work a little. Jade nods approvingly at you, and reaches in to check the winged boy’s progress. This time he doesn’t even protest, although he does jerk and tremble as she searches with careful fingers.

“Give me another push, Dave,” she tells him. He does, and her eyebrows go up. “There! I can feel the first one. Again, push.”

He makes an almighty effort, but it’s still not enough. “Goddamnit,” he snarls, “get _out_ , you little shit!”

“That’s the spirit,” Jade encourages, taking her hand back to make room for the egg when it emerges. “You tell that shell-bound brat who’s boss. Come on, one more time!”

Davesprite strains again, and now you can just see something beginning to open him up from the inside. The egg wall is smooth and slimy with fluid, and it’s hard to differentiate when everything is this or that shade of orange, but you think that might be his blood in there along with whatever else is making a mess on Jade’s bedspread. Childbirth, you’ve determined, is the most awful thing ever.

Another push, and another, and the ordeal seems to drag on forever. Finally, with a last shove and a harsh scream from Davesprite, the first egg arrives with a slick “pop.” Jade collects it and cleans it off with some wet wipes from her sylladex (that girl is always prepared, it seems), while the sprite goes limp and simply pants, exhausted. He’s sweaty and tear-streaked and still quivering faintly from the effort, and you think you might finally understand what your troll friends mean when they go on about pity. He _is_ pitiful like this, and it’s giving you all kinds of warm, protective feelings. You already figured out that you like him a lot, but this is something entirely different. This ventures clear out of “I have nice feelings for you and I think you’re hot” territory and into a whole new universe of emotion. You think you love him. From the way he smiles weakly when you touch his cheek, you think he might feel the same way about you.

“Here,” Jade says, laying the egg carefully next to the sprite. “Baby number one, all clean. You did great.”

“Yeah,” he replies, nearly breathless with relief. “Thank you.” He wraps an arm around the pale-orange ovoid, tucking it against his side. “I think it’s over for now. I don’t know how long it’ll be ‘til the next round, though.”

“I’m not sure how long it takes birds to lay,” Jade admits. “It could be anywhere from hours to days before they’re all out.”

“Days!?” you squeak. “Jade, he can’t go on like this for days, that’d be too much!”

Davesprite reaches over to pat your thigh comfortingly. “S’okay, man. At least now I know what to expect. I’ll be fine.”

~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~

Despite Davesprite’s reassurances, the second egg—which doesn’t come until the next morning—is just as hard on him as the first. His throat is raw from screaming by the time the egg is out, clean, and nestled in beside its twin, and you wish it was the last time you had to watch him suffer. Unfortunately, Jade estimates there are at least two more eggs, and if the pattern holds, it’s going to be about that many days before they all arrive.

By the third day, you’re almost as much of a wreck as the egg-layer himself. “Almost” being the operative word. Davesprite is a pale imitation of his former self, drained and sick and losing feathers all over the place. He won’t eat, can’t sleep because of the lesser contractions he experiences between laying sessions; it’s killing you to see him this way, more so with each hour that passes.

He’s so tired by the time the third egg is ready to come out that he can barely push at all, and no amount of coaching from you or Jade seems to make a difference. The pain isn’t a thing that’s stopped happening either, but he’s too worn out to do more than groan softly.

“If I live through this,” he rasps at you, “I’m never gonna make another mean joke about girls again as long as I live. My days of talking shit are over. I’m a changed man, for serious.”

“Your ecto-sis is going to love that,” you tease. “Dave ‘Birdman’ Strider, mending his terrible, woman-hating ways at last; she’ll probably declare a national holiday.”

“I never hated women,” Davesprite argues, his voice breaking as he attempts another weary push. “I just thought they were made of snarky horseshit. Turns out they were made of super-elastic vaginas and toughassery. Shit, I’m gonna cry again. Don’t look at me.”

You shush him and stroke his damp, stringy hair, and he hiccups quietly, a few stray tears trailing down his cheeks. Positioned near the lower half of his straining body, Jade bites her lip uneasily and waits to play receiver. It’s been too long, and all of you know it. “Dave,” she ventures (she stopped calling him “Davesprite” sometime between the first egg-laying day and now), “if you can’t push the egg out, I’m going to have to go in after it. Are you going to be okay with that?”

“Can’t see as I have many options at this point,” he admits, though he looks anything but okay with it. “I’m giving it everything I’ve got left, and it’s not doing jack shit.”

She nods stiffly, and goes in with a gloved hand to check the situation. He squirms unhappily; he’s hypersensitive after all the abuse to his nether regions, and the invasion is probably ten kinds of uncomfortable. “I can just barely feel it,” she proclaims. “If you can get it a little closer to me, I might be able to get a grip on it.”

The sprite nods, and after taking a deep, bracing breath, shoves with all his remaining might. Jade curses as her fingers slip once, twice—and finally catch hold. It’s horribly slow going, but with steady pulling and a little muscle action from the sprite, the egg finally comes out. This one too is cleaned and placed with its siblings, and Davesprite lets out a sigh like a dying man.

“Fuck,” he murmurs, “there’s one more in there. But I don’t have any strength left. How the hell am I supposed to do this again tomorrow?”

“Try to sleep,” you suggest. “That’s probably the best thing you can do right now.”

“I’ll try….”

He’s completely done in, so this time he actually manages to sleep for a couple of hours before those little waves of pain rouse him again. If anything, he looks even worse for getting that period of rest, only to have it end so soon. But he deals with it, and you hang around and talk with him while Jade goes and finds food on the off-chance he’ll eat it.

“Hey, Dave?” you whisper as you lay next to him. “I think I’m in lesbians with you.”

He snorts quietly at that, the best he can do at the moment. “Really, Egbert? I’m so flattered by that, you have no idea.”

You smile, and he smiles faintly back. “I mean it, though,” you tell him. “I love you.”

“Oh,” he says. “I…yeah. Thank you. I mean, me too.”

“It’s okay to come out and say it, you know.”

He exhales slowly, his eyebrows scrunching together a little. “Love you too, John,” he answers finally, the words almost too soft to hear.

You hug him close, and eventually, he falls asleep again. He gets about thirty minutes before waking up, at which point he tries unsuccessfully to eat a few bites of the food that Jade brings, and spends the rest of the day curled around his eggs, drifting in and out of consciousness.

The next day, around noon, it’s time to get the fourth and final egg moving. He’s barely even coherent at this point, responding to Jade’s commands to push like he’s on autopilot. His eyes keep drifting shut, and when they’re open they stare into nothing. You fight to get him to focus, but it’s like he’s not even there. When it becomes clear that his instinctive efforts aren’t going to be enough, Jade goes in after the egg again manually.

“I can’t keep hold of this one,” the girl frets. “It’s still too far in.”

“Jade,” you plead, “just make the last one smaller. It might be able to survive long enough for you to get it out, but Dave can’t take anymore.”

She stares at the winged boy helplessly for a moment. Then, with great reluctance, she nods. “I might be able to grab it and pull it out quick enough to keep it from getting crushed. It’ll be rough on him, though.”

“Do it, please.”

You don’t quite see what she does down there, but the result is that Davesprite’s slightly-rounded stomach appears to deflate, and then she’s swearing and pulling her arm back as quickly as she can without causing any damage. “Ugh, he’s too _tight_ —there! Got it!” She holds up her hand, and you let out a supremely relieved sigh when you see the small, orange egg cradled in her fist.

Jade wipes down the egg and returns it to its normal size, and lays it with the others. You help Davesprite coil himself loosely back around them, and he makes a soft, happy noise before passing out. It’s over. Thank god.

“We are the best midwives,” Jade declares. “It’s us.”

“Yup,” you agree. The two of you give each other slightly off-kilter grins…and promptly join Davesprite in slumber.

~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~


	3. Chapter 3

When Davesprite regains consciousness, you move him and the eggs back to the nest at his insistence. He’s still too tired to eat for the first couple of days, though he does accept liquids occasionally. As it so happens, his biology _does_ require that he take in nourishment, though not as often as a normal person would need to. You alchemize him Gatorade to replace the nutrients he’s lost, and between that and plenty of sleep, he recovers rapidly. On day three he’s even eating again, though you have him start with things like soup, since Jade says jumping straight back into solids will make him sick.

He’s awfully protective of the eggs, you discover. He’ll let you touch them, but if you try to pick them up or otherwise move them, he gets pissy with you. He also won’t let you give them names, which you think is just plain stingy of him after all the trouble you went through to help him deliver the little guys.

“But Aragorn is a great name for a boy!”

“No. Fuck you.”

“Killjoy.”

The one with the red speckles is Aragorn in your mind, and what Davesprite doesn’t know can’t hurt him.

Your feathery beau dotes on his un-hatched brood for about eighteen days. On the nineteenth, you waltz on in with a tray of breakfast goodies to find him sitting up, staring blankly down at the eggs. “Dave? What’s up?” Excitement bubbles up within you. “Oh, shit, are they hatching? Can I see—”

A subtle shift in his expression halts the words on your tongue so fast, you nearly choke on them. You swallow hard, a sudden knot forming in your throat. “Dave?”

“Nothing’s happening,” he mutters.

“Well, I mean, they’re eggs,” you reply nervously. “They’re not really supposed to do much.”

He lifts a hand and balls it into a fist, and before you can do more than cry out in protest, brings it down _hard_. There’s a gut-wrenching crack and a splattering sound, and you clamp a hand over your mouth in sick horror.

Then, he pulls back his dripping fist and you finally see what he sensed. Beneath the crumpled shell is…nothing. Just yolk and mess, nothing resembling even the beginnings of a living creature. “They—they’re—”

“They’re duds,” Davesprite finishes, and his voice is so bitter it hurts. “Just a bunch of fucking chicken eggs. After all that—” He stops himself, and his jaw clenches before he abruptly turns his back to you. “Get out.”

“Dave—”

“ _ **Get out!**_ ” he snarls, and you don’t even bother using your feet to abscond; you just kick up a stiff breeze and get the fuck out of dodge, leaving the breakfast tray behind.

Your eyes sting as you fly, and you wipe at them furiously, wondering all the while what exactly you’re crying for. It’s not because he yelled at you; hell, you’re not that sensitive. It’s not even so much that you’re destroyed about the eggs not becoming babies, either. You’re fourteen, for goodness’ sake, way too young to be a father (even if the idea did strongly appeal to you). Maybe it’s because he’s hurting. Maybe it’s because he won’t let you make it better. That could be it. Aren’t boyfriends supposed to be there for each other when times are bad? Why, then, won’t he let you be there for him now? It bothers you that he’s pushing you away, especially at a time when you know for a fact that he needs you.

You find Jade hanging out with a few of the consorts on the main deck of the ship. She takes one look at your face and pulls you into a hug. “Tell me,” she murmurs against your hair (gosh, she’s getting tall).

You sigh softly. “The eggs are no good. They’re never going to be babies after all. Dave’s pretty upset.”

“Oh, no….”

“He won’t even let me try to make him feel better. He just told me to leave.”

“He probably just needs some space. I’m sure he’ll come around soon, and then you can use the good, old John Egbert magic to cheer him right up.”

“I guess so.”

You don’t see Davesprite for the rest of the day, or the day after that. Finally, around dinnertime on the third day, he emerges at last. When he shows up in the central computer room where you and Jade are hanging out, you’re almost afraid to ask what he’s been doing, or if he’s feeling better, or what. Finally, you settle on a tentative, “Hey.”

“Hey,” he replies. He’s silent for a moment after that, and then, “I’m okay now.”

Thank god. “And the…you know….”

“Got rid of ‘em.”

“Oh.”

You let out a surprised squeak when he hugs you suddenly, but you don’t hesitate to wrap your arms around him in return. His wings come up and curve around both your heads, and in the hidden space he’s created he gives you a chaste little kiss. “Thanks,” he murmurs. “For sticking by me, and for backing off when I needed it.”

“Sure,” you reply, smiling at him. “No problem.”

He looks at you, those striking eyes of his finding yours over the tops of his shades. “I’m just all kinds of in love with you, man.”

A soft laugh escapes you. “Yeah, back at you.”

“Ahem.”

Davesprite lowers his “wing shield,” and levels a mock-scowl at Jade. “Rude, Harley. John and I were having a sweet-ass moment just now.”

“Oh, hush. Come here and give me hugs too.”

He shrugs and does exactly that. You whine at him about “bros before hos,” and Jade casually flips you the middle finger behind the sprite’s back. A feeling of normalcy settles on all of you at last; you can practically hear the collective sigh of relief.

Later, after the three of you have eaten dinner and enjoyed each other’s company for a few hours, you lead Davesprite back to your room. He follows along willingly, and you think he’s probably grateful not to have to go back to the nest right now. You shuck your t-shirt off and he snuggles under the covers with you, though his wings make it a tiny bit difficult for him to get comfortable.

His breathing evens out and you think he’s asleep, until his hand comes to rest on your stomach. His touch is hesitant, unsure, like he thinks your skin will burn him. You hold your breath as he explores, letting it out once you realize that it doesn’t really feel sexual; he’s just learning you, something he didn’t have much time to do before, when his mind and body were on fire with hormonal urges. It feels vaguely pleasant, and you lie still and let him do what he wants.

“Shit, Egbert, how do you swing a hammer with arms this skinny.”

“How do you swing a sword with those sticks glued to your torso? You’re skinnier than I am, Mister Cool.”

“What, no, have you seen these guns? I don’t even need bullets for these babies; they’re that lethal. They have so much man-stopping power I should need a permit to wield them.”

You wiggle closer so you can kiss the curve of his neck. “And who’s not paying attention to whose weaponry? I took out so many ogres with these pythons; you have no idea.”

“If you ever call your muscles ‘pythons’ again, I’ll peck your eyes out.”

You kiss his neck again, enjoying the way it makes him tilt his head back for more. “Hmm, you and what avian army?”

“The one that does your mom, obviously.”

“Pfft, Dave, I don’t have a mom.”

“Your Nanna, then.”

“Aw, dude, ewww!”

Davesprite grasps your hips and tugs your body closer to his, twining his tail lazily around you. You giggle and nuzzle him, and feel more than hear him chuckle in response. You’re so unbelievably comfortable right now. It’s like you’ve been lacking something, and only now do you understand that it was his body next to yours that you were missing all along. It doesn’t even matter how you got here, or when. As far as you’re concerned, you’ve loved him for a long time. You just didn’t call it by that name before.

“I can smell the sappy on you,” Davesprite teases. “You’re thinking about sunsets and ballads right now, I bet.”

“How do I liiiive without yoooou,” you croon, and laugh when he pulls a horrible face at you.

“I’m dismayed and disgusted that you would even think about bringing up that song, let alone that you’d actually damn my ears with it.”

“You know you love it.”

“Bromide, you’re just lucky I still love _you_ after that.”

“Hehe.”

Neither of you speaks again that night; you simply lie there and listen to each other breathe until you fall asleep.

~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~


	4. Chapter 4

Another round of birthdays later, you and your two friends are sitting around, playing a chaotic mix-up of Go Fish, War, and strip poker. You’ve long since lost track of the rules, and to be honest you only ever knew the rules for Go Fish to begin with. Judging by the amount of clothing still on everyone’s person, Jade is currently winning. She’s got on a light jacket, a tank top, a pair of girl-boxers, and those socks with the toes. You’re down to your pants, underwear, and socks, and Davesprite is wearing his shades and a scarf he got from Jade earlier. He’s not bothered by the fact that only his face and neck are clothed, since he’s always basically naked anyway, but the fact of the matter is he’s still losing. He’s losing deliberately, too, you’re almost certain; he started out wearing a ridiculous amount of stuff on the grounds that he can’t wear pants or regular shirts, so he got extra coats and accessories (plus a single shoe, for ironic purposes). And even though you know he most likely understands the ridiculously complicated rules way better than you, he’s playing way worse.

You’re not sure why his game sucks so much until you notice the heated glance he gives you when you’re finally forced to remove your pants. It brings a livid blush to your face, which you hide by bringing your cards up close in front of you.

“Want to call it, John?” Jade taunts good-naturedly. “You know I’m whipping both of you right now. Might as well surrender before you lose the rest of your dignity.”

You open your mouth to tell her off, because you’ve still got socks to ditch before you _really_ embarrass yourself, and that means you’re still in this thing. A quick peek at Davesprite confirms your earlier suspicion, however. He’s definitely checking you out, and all at once you don’t really want to play anymore. “Uh, you know what, Jade? You can have this one.”

“Whoo! In your faces—hey, where are you guys going?”

Davesprite arches an eyebrow at her, and slips an arm unsubtly around your waist. “Sorry, Harley, but I’ve got a different form of entertainment in mind now.”

She wrinkles her nose at both of you. “You gross boys and your gross sexytimes. Whatever, go be nasty; I’m just gonna chill out with the consorts and the Carapacians for a while.”

“You do that.”

Your face is hotter than ever by the time you and your boyfriend reach your room. Still, you attempt to be cavalier about the whole thing. “Wow, throwing the card game just to get me alone faster? That’s some shameless stuff right there.”

In reply, he yanks you forward and kisses you. The sheer _want_ behind it momentarily knocks you witless. His calm, slightly arrogant demeanor from before is totally gone, leaving behind a bundle of raw need, and at first you can’t even scrape together enough brain-power to question it. And why should you? After all, you’ve been with him for approximately a year now, and been _with_ him dozens of times since the first. It’s not strange that he wants you.

What _is_ unusual is the way he’s currently expressing it. Under normal circumstances, you’ve discovered, Davesprite is actually really reserved during any kind of intimate activity. He’ll fight not to squirm and arch when you touch him, and chew his lip raw to avoid making any sounds. He’ll shiver and clench his teeth and grip the sheets so hard it forces all the blood out of his knuckles, and when he finally can’t help himself anymore, he’ll make these soft, almost pained noises that, while incredibly sexy, are also hard for you to catch. Even when he’s topping, even when he initiates things he behaves this way, like he can’t bear to hear or feel himself actively respond to pleasure. It’s not that he doesn’t like sex, either, because he really, _really_ does. You know; you asked him. It’s just that he’s the king of trying too hard, and he’s too embarrassed to let himself go like that, even with you.

Which is why the way he’s presently attempting to devour your soul through your mouth is a bit startling.

It takes you a while, but you eventually manage to disconnect from his lips long enough to get a word in edgewise. “H-hold on a minute, what’s gotten into—”

You take in his flushed cheeks and somewhat dazed expression, and something clicks. Oh, shit. Is this what you think it is? “Dave…is that summertime hormonal crow stuff a _yearly_ thing?”

A hint of guilt pierces the haze of lust in his eyes. “Maybe….”

Well, screw _that_. You firmly grasp his shoulders and push him away, in spite of his protests. “Wow, okay. No.”

“John—”

“Nope.”

“But—”

“Not happening.”

“Damnit, Egbert, are you gonna make me _beg_ for it?”

You poke him sharply in the chest. “Calm your birdy tits, Dave. That’s the chemicals talking, not you.”

With his feathers puffed out but his shoulders drooping dejectedly, he looks a semi-hilarious cross between furious and deeply ashamed. “I can’t help it,” he implores you. “I’m so horny I can’t think straight. I just need—”

“What you _need_ is to chill out and remember what happened the last time you jumped my bones while you were hopped up on sex hormones. Seriously, do you want to get pregnant again?”

“Oh fuck you,” he growls. “We’ve done it a hundred times since then. If I was gonna get knocked up from sleeping with you, it would’ve happened already.”

“That’s a dumb excuse, and you know it. That time was different, ‘cause you were in some kind of weird, bird-sprite heat. You know, _like you are now_.”

“It’s not ‘heat,’ moron; I’m not a fucking cat.”

“Well, whatever you call it, then! The point is, I’m not having sex with you while you’re crazy with mating juice!”

“What, so you’re just gonna leave me like this!?”

He looks so dismayed by the idea that it almost changes your mind. But you know you have to put your foot down on this one. That whole ordeal with the eggs was too horrible for you to risk making it happen again. If it means he has to suffer a little bit now to avoid suffering a whole lot later, then by golly you’re all kinds of fine with that. “You’ll thank me later.”

He gapes at you for a full ten seconds before he seems to realize that you aren’t kidding, and you aren’t about to be swayed. The incredulous look on his face turns to frustration, which then melts into hurt, and he turns tail and flies away without another word.

In hindsight, you feel like a jerk. Even if it was the right thing to do, it doesn’t make his completely rejected expression as he left any easier to take.

Jade seems surprised to see you when you find her on the control deck a little later (fully dressed now, thank you very much). “Oh, hey! I thought you and Dave were, um….”

A guilty frown pulls at your mouth. “I sort of…brushed him off.”

“Huh? But why would you do that?”

You sigh, and lean back heavily against the nearest wall. “Because he’s in bird-heat or whatever it’s called, and I don’t want to get him pregnant again. It’s for his own good, but he was still pretty sore about it.”

Her reaction isn’t quite what you’re expecting. Rather than sympathize or tell you that you definitely did the right thing in this instance, she slaps a hand to her forehead and lets out a noise that’s vaguely reminiscent of an angry dog’s growl. “You! Why are you so _dumb_?”

“Excuse me?” you retort, thoroughly taken aback. “I’m not the one who’s trying to get into my pants when he’ll just end up going through egg-laying hell again!”

Jade throws her hands up in frustration. “But you didn’t make him pregnant last time at all! If you had, the eggs would have hatched!”

What? Oh. Oh, _no_. “You mean he’s gonna have eggs whether I have sex with him or not!?”

“Well, if he’s not, why would he be going through another heat cycle?” she demands. “His body is trying to force him to find someone to fertilize the eggs that he’s _already forming_!”

“Oh, shit!” You flail aimlessly for a moment, caught between the impulse to run to Davesprite and apologize or just roll around on the floor in a panic. “Jade, what do I do? I rejected him for no reason, and now his feelings are all hurt, and he’s going to have to go through all that terrible egg-laying stuff anyway on top of that, and—”

“Whoa, easy!” The dog-eared girl comes over and lays her hands on your shoulders. “Look, I don’t know if Dave has figured out yet that he’s going to lay again soon, so first thing’s first, we need to find him and talk to him about it.”

“Right.” Your anxiety levels off a little, and you put your brain to work. It comes up with answers faster than you thought it would. “The engine room. I bet he’s back in his nest by now.”

Jade nods, and the next thing you know, you’re both winking into existence right outside the aforementioned room. Teleportation powers are handy at times like these. Sure enough, when the two of you peek inside, there’s Davesprite curled up in his nest, sulking from the look of things.

No, you realize as you venture a little further into the engine room, not sulking; in distress. He’s balled up against the curved wall of the nest, trembling and panting quietly. Remorse hits you square in the chest when you realize that he got all worked up before, and then must not have been able to come back down from it. “Dave?” you call softly, and he flinches.

“Fuck off, John,” he says gruffly. “I’m humiliated enough already. I don’t need your stupid face in here making it worse.”

You glance helplessly at Jade, who makes a “go on” motion at you with her hands. Great. “Listen, I’m sorry about before. I thought I was doing you a favor by telling you no, but it turns out it wouldn’t have mattered either way.”

He turns his head a bit to stare at you. “The hell does that mean?”

“Well, uh…it looks like you’re probably going to make eggs again. Whether we do anything together or not.”

All the blood drains out of his face at that. “Fuck.”

“Yeah….”

Thankfully, Jade steps in to help you at this point. “I think what we need to know, Dave, is what you want to do.”

He’s silent for an uncomfortably long time. You can see him fighting his bodily instincts the whole while. He still looks feverish with need, and he keeps glancing over at you like you’re the answer to his problems. Yet you know what must be going through his mind right now. If he surrenders to these hormonal impulses, not only will he almost definitely be hells of embarrassed with himself later, he’ll also have to spend another handful of weeks agonizing over whether the eggs he’s inevitably going to lay will ever become babies. On the other hand, he’s going to lay again regardless (the three of you have neither the equipment nor the medical knowledge to prevent that), so his choices are to a) let you ease his discomfort now, and maybe, possibly, end up with little bird-sprite-things later—and wind up depressed again if he doesn’t—or b) endure who-knows-how-long a stretch of unfulfilled desire now, and later go through the torture of labor pains knowing full well it’s for absolutely nothing.

He lets out a resigned little huff. “Take a walk, Harley.”

She hesitates for a second, but then she catches on, and with an encouraging pat to your shoulder, she teleports away.

Davesprite reaches a hand out for you. “C’mere.”

“Um….”

“Goddamnit, Egbert, if I’m going to suffer either way, I’m at least going to get some amazing gay lovin’ out of it. Bring your hot, dweeby ass over here.”

It’s not quite clear to you whether this is a good idea or not. Logically speaking, it’s unlikely that giving in to him will have any negative impact on later events. Still, it’s all kinds of awkward for you to even think about sex after the stuff that just happened.

“Relax, John,” Davesprite tells you. “I’ve had sufficient time to, as you so eloquently put it earlier, ‘calm my birdy tits.’ I’m not going to ravage you straight out of the gate. We can just touch and stuff for now, okay?”

The way he’s still kind of flushed and breathless makes it hard to believe him, but as long as he doesn’t start humping you or anything right away, you guess it’s all right? “Touching is nice,” you concede, climbing into the nest with him.

“Touching is awesome,” he agrees, and immediately snuggles into you once you’re in reach. He sighs happily when you run your hands lightly up his back, careful to avoid his wings (they’re one of his triggers, you’ve discovered, and you don’t want to make him forget the “just touching” thing so soon). “Yeah, that’s better. You’re nice and cool, you know that?”

“Easy for you to say, you’re burning up.”

“It’s the fire of my love for you, dude. Makes me all toasty.”

You give an amused little snort. “You’re a huge cornball.”

“The hugest. Gimme a kiss.”

Kissing him is one of your favorite things, so obliging that request is easy. He kisses you back with only a little more urgency than you’re used to from him, threading his hands into your messy black hair, making it even messier, and nipping and licking lightly at your lips until you’re almost dizzy with it. Your hand finds the spot on the back of his neck that always makes him moan a little, and you knead it gently while your other hand settles firmly in the small of his back. There’s a furnace beneath his skin, and that combined with the ambient temperature makes the clothes you’re wearing feel stifling.

“John,” he breathes against your cheek, making you shiver. God, he’s impossible to resist. All the awkwardness is fading as you remember the many reasons why you ditched the card game earlier today. It’s almost embarrassing how fast he works you up, especially when you were so hesitant before.

You lean in and kiss his ear, something you know tickles, and he lets out a surprised puff of air. Your hand against his nape holds him in place as you ghost your lips around the vaguely shell-like shape; he squirms, flinches each time you exhale, and when he’s so sensitive that he’s half-forming pleas for you to stop, you abruptly move down to his neck and bite hard. A sharp gasp tears its way out of him, and with a lingering suck to that spot your teeth have marked, you pull away to grin cheekily at him.

Davesprite scowls at you. “Motherfucking—”

You kiss him again, this one just a firm press of lips with no more purpose than to shut him up. There’s not much that can stop him when he gets going on any kind of tangent, but mouth-to-mouth contact is usually a good bet.

He settles down, and your hands take to wandering over his almost excruciatingly warm body, since “touching” is what he asked for, and that’s a thing which you’re perfectly willing to do for him. His wings rustle as he lifts them out of your way, the sound faintly reminiscent of paper or rough fabric being jostled. The temptation to pet them is overwhelming, but you remind yourself that there’s no need to rush a single thing. He told you once that he’s pretty sure it’s a crow thing, associating having his wings stroked with physical intimacy. In his current, hormonally-driven condition, laying hands on his wings is going to end with you getting a lapful of extremely aroused bird-sprite-dude, and you still want to work up to that some.

You lay him back and proceed to relearn all his body’s dips and angles and very slight curves, feeling how each one fits your hands like he was made for them. It’s a beautiful thought, if a somewhat unrealistic one, that the universe might have created him for you especially. _Mine,_ you think, but don’t say it because you suspect it might come off as creepy. Is it all right to feel so possessive of him at times, like you do now? Is it all right to want to wrap him up in every shimmering feeling you have for him, and never let him go? You take solace in knowing that he doesn’t want to escape, even if you could find it in yourself to let him.

He hums softly when you kiss the place between his collarbones, and as your lips mark a path downward his hands slide out of your hair and down to your shoulders. There’s no particular goal in your mind right now; you’re just enjoying the texture of his skin. You wonder if he was always this hairless, or if the game remade him this way. He’s fuzzy in some places still, but it’s not a human kind of fuzzy. The nape of his neck, along his shoulders, the base of his wings, and his groin area, all have a very light covering of short, downy fluff, almost invisible to the eye, but wickedly soft and wonderful under a roaming touch. Everywhere else his skin is smooth as an infant’s, something which you’ve occasionally teased him about, but nevertheless like a lot.

Davesprite arches impatiently into you when your tongue finds the shallow indent where he’d normally have a bellybutton, and his tail snakes around your waist and up the front of your shirt. You laugh and try to remove the bold appendage, but he just clings on tighter. “Quit messing around,” he demands, a hint of renewed hunger in his tone.

“I thought you just wanted touching,” you rib him, unable to resist.

“I distinctly recall saying _for now_. That was a disclaimer, man.”

 “Oh, I see. But what if I just want to make out some more?”

He gawks at you incredulously. “You’re seriously not saying that when your head is practically in my crotch.”

Ah, yes, now that he mentions it, you are rather close to certain bits of him. You suppose you could be cruel and ignore what he obviously wants, but it’s not really in your nature. Being an occasional ass you can do, but you’ve never been one for straight up sadism. “Well, since I’m already here….”

He’s already leaking when you reach his opening, and he releases the breath he was holding when you drag your tongue through the trail of brightly-hued fluid. He always tastes amazing, which is fortunate, because otherwise the idea of putting your mouth near his forbidden territory would be kind of gross. As is, he’s frigging delicious and you can’t get enough of him.

Instead of giving him everything immediately, you start by kissing and licking around his slit, rubbing the slightly swollen edges with your thumbs, and basically doing anything but what you know he wishes you would. He’s trying not to surrender to his base urges, but you can see how badly he wants to writhe, maybe even grab you and force you to get on with it. The fact that he can even still hold back both amuses you and makes you want to remedy that. He might be hot and bothered as can be, but you realize that he’s still got a much firmer grip on his senses than you’d like.

You love the reserved, lip-chewing, fist-clenching Davesprite you’ve grown used to seeing during sex, but now that your earlier reservations have dwindled to almost nothing, you suddenly want to see that other side of him again. You want him to want you so badly he can’t make a coherent thought, and you want him to _show_ it. You want moaning and biting and back-scratching and helpless shudders under your hands, your mouth, and you want them now.

When your tongue abruptly plunges into him, his reaction is just about what you hoped. His whole body locks up in shock, his head jerks back so hard his shades get knocked askew, and a startled cry cuts the air like the sword that used to be buried in his torso. There’s no chance for him to recover, either, because you work the slick muscle into him as deep and hard as you can manage, lapping at his insides like he’s your favorite ice cream flavor (And you know what, if there was an ice cream that tasted like him, you’d totally eat it). His hands are back in your hair, gripping painfully tight as you tongue-fuck him, and the sounds that are escaping his pretty mouth are enough to make your dick strain against the fabric of your pants and underwear. Yet, you’re in no hurry to take care of yourself. You need both hands to hold him down so he doesn’t buck up and bust you in the lip or something, and you’re not stopping what you’re doing just to have a hand free to touch yourself with.

“John, _please_ ,” he whimpers, and oh, wow, it’s so easy to reduce him to begging in this state. You’d need a crowbar and like a gallon of industrial-grade lubricant to pry that out of him any other day. But here he is, fighting to push up into each stroke of your tongue inside him, and those whines and pleas keep spilling across his lips and driving you nuts with desire. You bring him to the brink, basking in the gradually increasing volume of his moans—and then you stop, causing him to swear and dig his nails into your scalp out of sheer spite. You wince, pry his hands out of your hair, and end up having to bat them away when he immediately tries to latch onto you again.

“Dave, no, give me a minute!” You’re laughing even as you reprimand him, because the absolutely affronted look he’s giving you is funny as hell.

“Hurry the fuck up!” he growls, and you’re still snickering as you pull your clothes off. He’s on you the second you’re naked, stealing the next ripple of laughter straight off your tongue with a kiss. Your glasses clack against his crooked-sitting shades, so you remove both pairs of eyewear and toss them carefully away so neither of you accidentally rolls on top of them.

It only takes a handful of seconds for you to slip your fingers up into him and coax out his dick, and you take both it and yours in hand and just stroke for a while. He pants quietly against your lips between kisses, the space between his eyebrows crinkling and his body undulating restlessly to the rhythm of your hand. You wish you weren’t so awful at sexy talk, because you want to tell him how good he looks, how much you want him. He always ends up cringing or laughing at you whenever you try, though, so you just describe your desire for him through your actions.

There’s a moment when you lay him down again that you do speak, however, if only to address something that seems fairly important. “We don’t have to do it this way,” you tell him. “If you don’t want to try for babies again—”

“You’re literally talking about this now,” Davesprite asks, his tone flat with disbelief.

“Well, yeah, it’s not like I can just pretend it’s a non-issue. ‘Cause if you don’t want to go through all that again, we could just leave it alone, and you could do me instead.”

“John, there’ll be eggs either way. I thought we’d established that.”

“Yeah, but if they aren’t fertilized or whatever, there won’t be any risk if Jade just makes them little so they don’t hurt you as bad when they come out. Even if you accidentally squish them, it won’t be like you’re actually killing anything, since nothing was going to be alive later anyway.”

He sighs and shifts uncomfortably beneath you. “Look, I didn’t want to tell you this, since it’s worlds of uncool and we all know how I am about that shit, but I actually kind of… _want_ some little bird-brats.”

Wow, okay, didn’t see that one coming. You gape at him in shock. “What? Why? I mean, I guess I thought it’d be sort of awesome to be a dad, but aren’t we too young for that stuff?”

“We’re too young to be saving the universe, John. We’re too young to be fighting and dying and losing the people we love—” He pauses, and something painful twists at his mouth and makes him look vulnerable on a level that’s different from anything you’ve seen so far. “When the first batch of eggs turned out to be duds, I just—it really hurt. I don’t know if it’s the bird part of me or the human part of me or what, but I wanted those little bastards to hatch, and when they didn’t I felt so damned _low_. I think on some level, I already knew I was gonna try again. Maybe it’s selfish, I dunno. You’re right; we are too young. I guess I just thought, hey, we’ve already been and done so much that a bunch of kids had no business being or doing, and we’ve all lost so much along the way. Why can’t I have, you know….”

You’d thought he could never surprise you more, but you realize you were wrong as it dawns on you what he’s trying to say. He comes from a place where everyone and everything he cared about is now gone, having died or blinked out of existence when the timeline collapsed on itself. More than anyone, he knows the value of friends, family, loved ones, and of not wasting a single second, because life is short and the universe is cruel. When you think of it that way, it makes sense that his failure to hatch the last bunch of eggs would get to him so badly, and that he’d want to try again. “I think I get it. But it’s risky. We don’t even know what’s going to happen a year from now.”

“I know. It scares the shit out of me thinking about that stuff. Like, what if I can’t protect anybody? What if I’m still doomed after all, and I’m supposed to die eventually? Having kids would be stupid in cases like that. But it’s something I want now, and I can’t shake it off with plain old common sense.” He gives you a guilt-riddled look. “I guess I shouldn’t be dragging you into it, though. Maybe we should just forget about it after all.”

You shake your head, smiling a little. “I think it’s pretty amazing that you’re even willing to take that chance. And the fact that you want kids so much is actually really sweet. If you want bird-brats, Dave, then as your loving boyfriend it’s my duty to make sure you get them.”

You huff softly when he grabs you in a super-tight hug. “You enormous dork,” he mumbles against your neck.

The grin that spreads across your face is so wide it almost hurts. “Gonna make a whole mess of babies with you, Dave,” you purr, making him snicker and slap you on the chest. “Loads of babies. Babies from here to Timbuktu. There’ll be so many babies, people will ask dumb, obvious questions like ‘where the heck did they get all these babies? Was Target having a sale on thumbsuckers and nobody told us?’ Everyone will be jealous of how many beautiful, chubby-cheeked kiddos we have, and we’ll just be like, ‘sorry, folks, trade secret. Need-to-know basis only, and you don’t need to know.’”

“Egbert, quit appropriating my shtick and make sweet, buck-toothed love to me already.”

You kiss the top of his head. “’Kay.”

The mood does require a little reestablishing, but he’s got the advantage of still having weird mating chemicals rushing through his veins, and you’ve got the advantage of regular old teenage enthusiasm, and soon enough the both of you are more than ready to continue where you left off.

He hisses when you slide into him, wings trembling where they’re fanned out on either side of him, hands clutching at your shoulders like you’re the last stable thing in his world. His eyes have gone all sleepy-looking with lust; it’s a great look for him, possibly even the best look, though you love every one of his looks so it’s hard for you to play favorites. You brace one hand against the soft bedding of the nest, slide the other into the shallow dip at the small of his back. The first thrust makes you shudder deep down to your core; he always feels incredible, but especially so now, when all that heat is thrumming inside him like a living flame. Honestly, you might not hold out for very long. Lucky for you, he’s on about the same page, already rolling up against you with the sort of desperation that means he’s nearing the edge.

You push into him again, and he makes this low moan that sounds like he’s in absolute agony, his talon-like nails digging into your back just the way you imagined, the way you wanted. Your pace is still slow, partly because you want this to last longer than it’s going to, and partly because it’s easier to watch his face this way. There’s so much emotion there; you always thought that if you met any version of Dave in person, he’d have this crazy-unreadable mask going all the time, and while Davesprite certainly can poker-face with the best of them, he’s very rarely expressionless. If he trusts you, if he’s comfortable, he’ll show you all kinds of things.

He notices the way you’re visually drinking him in, and colors a bit. He doesn’t try to hide, though, probably because he’s busy watching you back. He observes you until you hit just the right angle inside him, and then his eyes shut tight and he gasps and grinds up against you, tail thrashing and wings fluttering helplessly. “Like that, fuck, _yes,_ ” he beseeches, and with a little trial and error, you eventually work out how to do it again. And oh, god, when you do, the result is like electricity. He arches and cries out, high and strained, and you’re sure he’s making you bleed with how hard he’s clawing you, but you don’t have the capacity to mind when he’s clenching around you like that.

You’re practically matching him moan for moan at this point, and the arm that’s supporting you is starting to shake. You let out a quivery laugh when a stray caw escapes your lover; he _hates_ it when that happens, but you’ve grown sort of fond of it. It just means he’s so overwhelmed that he can’t control his vocalizations at all, which is something you definitely approve of. You bend down to kiss him, a bit of a challenge when you’re still rocking steadily into him, but it’s worth it to feel your lips slide against his, feel his warm, vaguely sweet breath puff across your face as he struggles to take in enough air not to pass out (he’s done that a couple of times, and it was fucking _hilarious_ , but it also meant you didn’t get to finish, since making love to an unconscious body did and still does sit wrong with you).

Davesprite’s tail winds against the backs of your thighs, half ticklish and half tantalizing, and when he abruptly presses the tip against your anus you let loose a surprised gasp and jerk your hips forward hard. Wound tight as he is, it’s more than enough; he cums with a shivery wail, wings beating erratically and cloacal walls squeezing so intensely around your cock that it very nearly hurts. It’s a good kind of “almost-pain,” though, and you groan out his name and continue to rut half-mindlessly against him until your own orgasm takes you.

The tremors of ecstasy gradually ease to a light hum inside you, and you finally let that supporting arm of yours give out. Davesprite grunts unhappily when all your weight suddenly drops on top of him, but you’re tuckered out after that little performance, so he’s just gonna have to deal with it. He sighs and wriggles a bit, and finally settles down once he’s worked himself and you into a reasonably comfortable position.

“Lay off the sweets, Egbert,” he mutters. You retaliate by blowing a fat, wet raspberry into his neck, which has him flailing and making the most hysterical nonsense sounds in protest. “Fuck you, can’t even enjoy the afterglow with you being such a derptastic piece of shit,” he complains once you stop, and you just grin and wrap your arms underneath him so he can’t push you off.

He mutters irritably, but eventually winds his arms around you in return. His hands caress your back and sides aimlessly as the two of you enjoy the aforementioned afterglow in silence. It’s you who breaks that silence, preceding your words with a kiss to the nearest available inch of skin. “So, how do you feel?”

He knows you’re asking about the “raging sex hormones” thing, but he chooses to be snarky anyway. “Mm. Very, very pregnant. Think you did a good job knocking me up this time.”

“You can’t be pregnant, jackass, it’s only been like ten seconds since we fucked.”

“Are you saying that I haven’t literally conceived yet, John? That those little egg cells I’m busy basting with your deluxe Egbertian sperm are not in fact babies? Is that what you’re implying, ‘cause if it is then I guess I can just go get an abortion right now, you hideous monster.”

You make a face at him, even though he can’t see it with you snuggled into his neck like this. “For the love of god, Dave, why do you always have to talk so much after sex?”

“Hey, you started it. Anyway, you love my pillow talk. Just admit it, and everything will be great.”

Rather than continue in that vein, you simply yawn and close your eyes. “Goodnight, Dave.”

“Yeah, goodnight, dork-face.”

“Feather-butt.”

“Rat-teeth.”

“Hipster.”

“…Ouch.”

“Love you.”

And even though you can’t see it, you can imagine that smile of his, the one that’s only for you. “Love you too,” he whispers, and it’s the last thing either of you say before you fall asleep.

~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~


	5. Chapter 5

You’re ready this time.

In the days that precede Davesprite’s second egg-laying, you make sure to correct all the mistakes you can think of from the last time. You make sure he eats, and not just the bare minimum like he’s used to. At Jade’s suggestion, you make sure he drinks a lot of milk too, so the eggshells have a chance at being tough enough to stand up to being shrunk if it absolutely comes to that. You make him sleep, even when he insists he’s not tired. You even force him to practice breathing with you, though he rolls his eyes and makes sarcastic comments the whole time. He complains like a child about absolutely everything, and sometimes you get short with him in response. You know he’s just being bitchy because he’s nervous about what’s coming, but geez, does he really have to be so difficult? His attitude is something you seriously don’t need when you’re doing everything you can to help him.

Still, your annoyance with him vanishes the moment he wakes you one night, his hand tight around your wrist and pain in his eyes. That’s one thing you couldn’t prepare him for: the pain. It leaves him unable to do anything but huddle in your arms and grit his teeth as you once again take him to Jade.

“Right on schedule,” the girl remarks. “Set him on the bed, like before. Here, John, gloves. Dave, don’t you _dare_ clench up this time, or I will personally punch you in your avian ovaries, got it?”

“Where’d you even learn how to deliver babies,” he mutters as you lay him on his side. “You’re like this mutant hybrid of nurse and drill sergeant.”

“I told you when you asked before, I learned from reading some books in Grandpa’s library. He had all kinds of stuff in there.”

He opens his mouth, no doubt to fire off some scathing Strider wit, but then shuts it again with a hiss. “ _Fuck_ , I hoped it’d get easier….”

“Just relax and breathe,” you remind him, and he gives your hand a grateful squeeze.

The next several hours are every bit as awful as you remember, and by the time the first egg is clean and lying next to Davesprite, he’s sweaty and teary-eyed and about as much of a train wreck as he was last year. To everyone’s surprise, his body decides not to give him a break this time, and immediately begins trying to evacuate the second egg. He writhes and swears and hangs onto your hand for dear life, crying out in pain and frustration, and all you can do is squeeze his hand back and try to talk him through it.

“Dave, hang on, stop,” Jade says after a while, her pretty face a little pale and a lot worried. She lays a hand on his body where the egg is currently lodged, feeling delicately. “Damn, I think it’s stuck.”

“Don’t say that,” the sprite moans. “Please, don’t say that, stuck is bad, it’s fucking horrible. We want unstuck eggs here, no stuck-ness allowed.”

“I need to know how bad it is, and if I can fix it. Stay still, okay?”

She has to work against his involuntarily contracting muscles to get her hand far enough inside, and Davesprite flinches and makes pained noises the whole while. “It’s sideways,” Jade announces, her expression tight with concern. “I’m gonna have to turn it, and for that, I need you to try to relax as much as possible.”

A nod is all he can manage, but it’s all she requires. He whimpers as she carefully maneuvers the egg, but little by little she gets it facing the right direction. The instant she’s done he’s pushing with all his might, and his shaky sigh of relief when the egg finally pops free is the most pitiful thing you’ve ever heard. “Two down,” he pants. “Jade, can you tell how many are left?”

She feels his stomach again, and bites her lip unhappily. “From what I can feel here…there’s about four more. That’s six total.”

“Six!” you blurt. “Holy shit….”

Davesprite makes a perfectly miserable noise and drops his head limply onto the mattress. “I can’t fucking deal with this. It’s like some terrible, cosmic joke. ‘Congratulations, you survived laying a bunch of eggs the size of cantaloupes!’ ‘Oh, really, what’d I win?’ ‘Two fucking additional cantaloupes! Have fun, asshole!’ Shit, someone knock me unconscious so I don’t have to be present for this disaster happening to my nether regions.”

“Well, at least it looks like the first round is over,” Jade assures him. “You’ll have some time to recover now. You should sleep if you can, and drink something with electrolytes. Here, I alchemized you some apple-flavored Gatorade, since I remembered you complaining that all their stuff tastes like sewer water.”

He opens his eyes to stare at her, disbelief warring with gratitude. “You made me an _apple-flavored_ sports drink?”

“Yup! I know you were feeling too sick last time, but if you can drink it now I think you should.”

You help him sit up and lean him against you so he can take a sip from the bottle she offers him. The look on his face is somewhere very close to bliss. “Jade, you are my new favorite. Sorry, John, but I’m divorcing you.”

You snicker a little at that. “Yeah, good luck getting her up for a two-a.m. feeding once your spritelets are hatched. Have you seen what kind of a morning person she isn’t?”

“Fine, I won’t divorce you. But Jade gets to be part of our snuggle-piles from now on.”

“Sounds good.”

He downs half the bottle over the next fifteen minutes or so, and then caps the drink and lets you take it from him and set it aside. His eyelids have started to droop by now, and before you know it he’s passed out against your chest. “Wow, he’s out. I thought the contractions would make him too uncomfortable to sleep.”

Jade twiddles her thumbs a touch guiltily. “I might’ve integrated a mild sleeping medicine into the Gatorade. I knew he’d need rest, and that he’d probably have trouble again. Don’t tell him I drugged him, okay? He’ll get all indignant and stuff.”

“You’re devious,” you reply, grinning at her. You’re pathetically grateful to her, actually. Davesprite really needs sleep to keep his strength up.

The dog-eared girl stretches her arms over her head and groans softly. “This is going to suck. Four more eggs, and we can’t count on them to come as quickly as the first two. More of them might even get stuck.”

“You should rest too,” you tell her. “We need our nurse-slash-drill-sergeant in fighting shape if we’re gonna get through this in one piece.”

She smiles at you, and slides over so she can lay a kiss on your cheek. “Don’t forget to take care of yourself, John. You’re our fearless leader, after all.”

“You all keep saying that, but I always end up relying on you guys.”

“Well, right now Dave is relying on you. And I know you’ll do a great job.”

You ruffle her thick, black hair. “Good Jade. Best Gal-Pal.”

Her canine ears twitch, and she giggles. “You big dork. I’m going to take a nap now, okay? Wake me if anything happens.”

The next few days are rinse and repeat; Davesprite powers through like a champion for the next two eggs, but by egg number five he’s reaching his breaking point fast. All the preparation helped, and so does the rest and hydration that he manages to get between rounds, but there’s only so much his body can handle before it starts to wear down. He’s fatigued by the struggle, by the pain, and each push starts to become an ordeal in itself. At one point, he’s so tired of it all that he flat out refuses to continue.

“I can’t,” he mumbles when you encourage him to keep at it. “I’m done. Leave me alone, I don’t want to do this anymore.”

“Hey, come on, you can’t stop now,” you coax him. “You’re almost there. Just finish with this one, and then you can rest.”

“No.”

“Dave, listen to me; I know this is tough, but you’ve got to keep at it.”

“No,” he insists, weary tears welling up in his orange-gold eyes.

You’re torn between crying yourself and shaking him in exasperation. “I know you’re tired, and I’m really sorry, but you’re only going to hurt yourself more if you let those eggs stay where they are.”

“Come on, Dave,” Jade adds gently. “Just a little more, and we’ll let you sleep. I promise.”

“I said I _can’t_ ,” he growls. “What goddamn part of that wasn’t in plain fucking English!?”

It’s been a long fucking few days, and that bit of nastiness towards your ecto-twin finally shatters your patience. “If you’ve got enough strength left to yell at people who are trying to help you,” you snap, “then you’ve got enough left to push. Quit whining like a two-year-old and do it.”

Jade and Davesprite both gape at you, and you blush brightly when you realize you sound like somebody’s dad. Not your dad, maybe (he was never that harsh with you), but somebody’s. Still, you know you aren’t wrong. Dave’s just acting like a baby now, and you’re not going to let him waste his remaining energy on being stubborn.

As it turns out, that was exactly the spur he needed. He makes an angry sound in his throat and tenses up, and just like that he’s back in the game. And yes, he’s glaring at you while he winces and shoves, and yes, his nails are biting into your hand harder than necessary, but at least he’s focused now. If he wants to direct his exhaustion and pain and frustration at you, you’re content to let him. “Come on, coolkid, gonna let an _egg_ beat you?” you prod him, and he makes another of those low, furious noises and pushes again.

“I’m kicking your ass when this is over,” he huffs. “I swear to god, Egbert.”

“Sure, if you think you’re bird enough.”

“I’ll plant my fist right in your big, smug, toothy face; don’t think I won’t. You’ll be crying like an infant freshly smacked on the backside, because I’m gonna spank you into next fucking _year_.”

“Bring it on, baby-mama. I’ll drop you like one of those ‘sick beats’ you like so much. And when I’m done whipping your ass, I’m gonna make you say Nic Cage is awesome.”

“Oh _fuck you_ , you are DEAD.” In his rage he summons a final burst of strength, and with a snarl like a wild animal, he forces egg number five out into the world. Jade has to snatch it away before he _chucks_ it at you, and by the time he realizes he’s still got your hand (and could hurt you really bad if he just dug his claws in a bit harder), he’s wiped out all over again, and can’t do more than glower sullenly. “I’m going to sleep,” he says. “And when I wake up, I’m murdering you.”

You lean down and kiss him on the forehead, since he can’t move to make good on that right now. “Love you too, hummingbird. Get some rest.”

He passes out with an indignant grunt, and you flop down next to him with a huff. Jade sets the now-clean egg between you. “That was ridiculous,” she informs you. “But brilliant.”

“Thanks. Think I’m gonna sleep too. Don’t let him kill me if he wakes up first.”

“I won’t.”

Egg number six makes its bid for freedom several hours later, and Davesprite barely even wakes up for it. He moans and thrashes and mumbles incoherently, and you stroke his hair and squeeze his hand, and eventually, the last of the clutch is nestled in with its fellows. It was a rough road, but overall not quite as traumatizing as the first time around. Jade does indeed join the snuggle-pile afterwards, cuddling up against the now-sleeping sprite’s back and smiling over his shoulder at you before drifting off into slumber.

You watch them for a while. It’s a funny feeling you have, like they’re _yours_. In different ways, perhaps, but yours nonetheless. It’s a complicated thing. Davesprite isn’t just your lover, and Jade isn’t just your friend; they’re worlds more than that. You were all just silly, ignorant kids when this thing started. You had no way of knowing back then how much these people would come to mean to you. It’s overwhelming at times, but you like it. You’re just as much theirs as they are yours, so it all works out in the end.

The days-long struggle finally catches up with you, and you lay your head down and close your eyes.

~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~


	6. Final

You move Davesprite and his eggs back to the nest as soon as he’s physically able to tolerate it. After wracking your brain for every bit of knowledge on birds and hatching stuff that you learned in grade school (and it was enough for your class to hatch some baby chickens, so it should, in theory, be enough for this), you wrap the clutch in warm towels, check the temperature of the room every few hours, and even alchemize a humidifier, since you’ve recalled something about eggs requiring a certain amount of moisture as well as heat.

Davesprite is tense and quiet during this time. Occasionally he’ll turn the eggs, the process appearing instinctive, and it’s rare for you to find him in any position but coiled protectively around them. Sometimes you’ll catch him staring at them, searching futilely for signs of change, of life. You don’t know what you’re planning to do if nothing develops again. Try your best to comfort him, you suppose. In the meantime, all you can do is be there, bring him food and water and chatter animatedly at him in an effort to keep his spirits up. Jade comes and checks up on the two of you periodically, letting you know about anything interesting that happens around the ship while you’re holed up in the engine room, and generally bringing that little bit of extra optimism with her.

Nineteen days pass, and nothing happens. You see the edgy, expectant gleam in Davesprite’s eyes gradually dim and go out. On the morning of the twentieth day, you’re forced to call it. “I don’t think they’re going to hatch, Dave,” you tell him reluctantly.

He doesn’t move from where he’s curled up around the eggs. “Maybe…maybe it just hasn’t been long enough.”

“It’s been just as long as last time, though.”

“Maybe I jumped the gun last time. I could’ve waited longer.”

You know that’s not right. Before, the crow half of his brain told him that nineteen days was the limit. It’s probably telling him the same thing now; he’s just fighting it, because he doesn’t want to believe. The urge to get him out of here is tugging at you, and you cautiously lay a hand on his arm. “Come on. Let’s go get something to eat, okay? You’ve sat in here long enough.”

He curls tighter around the eggs, refusing to look at you. “One more day,” he says, and you can almost sense him bargaining with Time, petitioning the universe to reward him for his pain and his patience, even as he knows the futility of it. “Just one more day, then I’ll leave, I promise.”

No, he won’t. You can see it already, in such vivid detail it frightens you; he’ll stay here until he turns pale and wispy like a real ghost, until there’s nothing left of him but a corpse and a sad echo in the walls. Your fingers curve around his bicep, and you pull gently but insistently. “You’ve already done everything you can. Let’s go.”

He resists as you drag him away from the eggs, tail thrashing and wings beating fitfully at the air. “John, no, not yet, please, just give me a little more time—”

You wrap an arm around his waist and he cries out in denial as you haul him over the side of the nest. It’s hard to hold onto him when he’s as big as you are and heavy as fuck to boot, but you haven’t been swinging giant hammers around without packing on some muscle as a result. “Stop it,” you order, ignoring the way your voice has gone all tight and shaky. “Cut it out, it’s over!”

He elbows you sharply in the side and you hiss, but don’t let go of him. Then a wing catches you in the head, and you almost lose him after all before grabbing hold again at the last second. “Dave, quit! OW, don’t you bite me!”

“Let me **_go_**!”

You’re strong, but he’s desperate, and you’re about ready to whack him unconscious with something just to get him to stop struggling. You’re seconds from reaching for Zillyhoo when a noise breaks through the chaos and stops both of you cold. You listen hard, barely daring to breathe, and there it is again: a faint cracking sound.

In an instant Davesprite jerks free of your grasp, and this time you don’t try to stop him; instead, you scramble back into the nest with him, and the two of you hover anxiously near the eggs as—yes!—a large crack appears in one of them, widening even as you watch.

“Oh my god,” you breathe.

Davesprite doesn’t even tear his gaze away from the egg to acknowledge you. Instead, he leans forward slightly, eyes wide with anticipation. “Come on, little dude,” he whispers. “You can do it.”

And pretty soon you’re doing it too, clenching your fists excitedly and cheering the hatching chick on. “That’s it, push!”

A tiny wing presses against the fissure, withdraws, is replaced with a tiny hand. Pieces of shell fly as half-glimpsed limbs pummel away at it from within. Bit by bit the egg breaks apart, until with a gush of yellowish fluid, a small body tumbles out into the open air. The baby peeps softly, coughs up some egg-gunk—and goes still.

“Hey….” Davesprite reaches, hesitates, and then does a kind of panicked lurch forward. “HEY! No, no, don’t do that, please!”

You’re moving too before you realize, but you stop short before you can touch the soggy, lifeless little form. Oh, god, he’s not breathing, what are you supposed to do when something’s not breathing? Shit, right, your dad made you learn CPR! “Dave, move!” You shove your panicking boyfriend out of the way and bend over the spritelet. Your first attempt merely results in you puffing air all over the place, and you quickly realize the problem. “He’s too small,” you lament. “I can’t get any air into him like this!”

Davesprite’s feathers ruffle up anxiously, but then he pulls himself together at last. “Okay, fuck, um…you need to direct the airflow somehow.”

“We don’t have a mask or anything, though!”

“Goddamnit, John, are you the fucking Heir of Breath or not!? Do your windy thing!”

“Oh! Right!” It’s a struggle to get that kind of insane precision with your powers, but you try anyway. Things around the room start to rattle faintly as you summon a breeze. Too strong; you pull it in, concentrating hard as you attempt to shape it to your will. Gradually, you gain control. You won’t be able to hold it for long—you’re already perspiring a bit from the effort—but it should be long enough to save one life.

You use the push and pull of air to form a “funnel” between your mouth and the chick’s. Mindful not to suck in too big a breath (and risk overinflating your patient’s tiny body), you pinch the infant’s nose closed, and exhale. It’s a strain keeping the funnel flowing tight and fast enough that it channels your breath into the little one’s mouth, but it’s worth it to see his chest expand. You use two fingers to do chest compressions, then administer another breath. _Please,_ you think. _Please don’t die._

You’re on the fourth set of chest compressions, and time is running out. You can’t remember how long it takes for brain damage to occur in situations like these, but you know the window of safety is closing rapidly. You breathe into the spritelet again—and the little one coughs. Your heart leaps into your throat when he flails and peeps resentfully; he’s a little weak, but he’s _alive_! “Oh thank god, Dave, look, he’s okay!”

Davesprite lets out a shuddery sigh of relief. He looks about ready to keel over with it, but his expression changes altogether when you scoop up the baby and deposit him in your boyfriend’s hands. It’s strange and sort of amazing; you don’t think you’ve ever seen him look so…what’s the word…entranced? His gaze is so soft; he almost looks like a whole different person. He’s beautiful, and you just want to kiss him. So you do, though you’re careful not to squish the baby between you. “Happy Birthday, little guy,” you address the spritelet, who blinks wide, _blue_ eyes at you in response.

“Holy shit,” Davesprite exclaims quietly. “He got your eyes.”

“He looks just like you, though, except in miniature,” you reply, your grin so wide it practically hurts. “And—” You glance at the little one’s lower half. “He’s got legs. Hehe, he’s like a chubby little Dave. That’s so cute! What’re you gonna name him?”

Davesprite considers this for a moment. “Dorito.”

“What, _no_ , you can’t name a baby Dorito! Be serious.”

“Hey, I was totally being serious. He’s orange like the sickest of processed cheese product, why wouldn’t I name him Dorito?”

“Dave, if you name our son after a snack food, I’m never having sex with you again.”

“Whoa, no need to be cruel.”

“Not even kidding, bro.”

He rolls his eyes. “Fine. For the record, though, his nickname is going to be Dorito. You know, in quotation marks, like when people put their full names in movie credits.”

“You’re impossible.”

“Yeah, and you love me anyway.”

You do, but that’s not the issue here. Naming babies is harder than you thought, especially when you know Davesprite won’t let you name the tyke after any of your favorite actors. “Maybe you should name him after someone you know. What was your brother’s name?”

He stares at you. “I…just called him Bro.”

“You never knew his _name_?”

“Did you know your dad’s name, or did you just call him Dad?”

Oh, good point. “We can’t really name a baby ‘Bro’ either.”

The winged boy shrugs a little. “Yeah, I guess not.”

You look back down at the infant, who just gawks at you in return. “Wow, this naming thing is tough. To be clear, you’re not going to accept Nic, Mathew, or Bruce, right?”

“Fffffff, _no_.”

 “We could name him Sassacre.”

“John, I will kill you in your sleep.”

“Tyler?”

“Not naming my kid after your female movie crush, dude.”

“Ooo, what about Howie?”

“NO.”

“Geez, you’re so picky!”

“Hell yeah, I’m gonna be picky; this kid will be stuck with what we name him for life.”

“Well, what the heck are we gonna call him, then?”

He shifts the baby from his hands to the curve of his arm, a contemplative look on his face. “How about John?”

“Huh? But that’s—”

“Your name, yeah. So, how about it? John ‘Dorito’ Egbert-Strider the Second. Has a nice ring to it, doesn’t it?”

Warmth creeps up your neck and floods your whole face. “I…are you sure?”

“Why not? I mean, there are too many Daves running around already, so why not another John?” He leans over to kiss you on the cheek. “’Sides, I can’t think of any other name that means more to me. So, yeah, I’m sure.”

John Junior sneezes at you, and you smile back. “He looks like a John ‘Dorito’ Egbert-Strider the Second, actually.”

You cuddle with Davesprite and the baby for a while. Eventually, though, you can’t help but cast a forlorn look at the remaining eggs. “I guess the others didn’t make it.”

His brow wrinkles unhappily. “Yeah. I mean, I guess I could sit on ‘em for a few more days, just to be sure.”

You scoot over to the eggs and lift one carefully in your hands. It’s heavy…but probably not heavy enough to have a chick inside. The others are the same as you weigh them one by one. “Do you have a flashlight? I can’t believe I didn’t think of this earlier, but we could always do the light bulb test.”

He does have one, as it so happens, and you click it on and shine it behind the eggs one by one. Disappointment settles in your gut as each test shows nothing but shapeless guck inside. “None of the others even started to form. I’m sorry, Dave.”

“Don’t be.” He cradles your namesake, and that soft look is back in his eyes. “We still got one, and that’s pretty damn awesome.”

_Yeah,_ you think as you drink in the sight of them both. _It is._ “Let’s go show Jade! She can be the godmother.”

“Cool. Lead the way, baby-daddy.”

This, you’ve decided, is going to be the best year on a battleship in space yet.

~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~


End file.
